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See this is where HN has fallen off a cliff, the top commented Runeks supplies a highly theoretical and nonchalant answer to what blockchains _can_ be. That’s b

by dsco 4y ago

See this is where HN has fallen off a cliff, the top commented Runeks supplies a highly theoretical and nonchalant answer to what blockchains _can_ be. That’s been the majority of HNs take on the technology. But the Internet was made for text communication and here we are decades later with social media and streaming video. TimJRobinson at least states something which is rare on HN, a take on blockchain technology with experimental instead of theoretical knowledge on the subject matter.

gatewaynode 4y ago
This. It's not like all innovation that has occurred in the crypto-currency space is useless, there are some real valuable innovations there. Blockchain as a whole is just too tainted to see the forest for the trees in all the greed, specifically the word "blockchain" has become magical and deceptive. "Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing." Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. And it's not a magic bullet statement either.
- bartread 4y ago
  > Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. I'm not saying Tim's wrong, but one of the problems that Ive seen a lot - to the point of being tempted to use the word "constantly" - with blockchain is this sort of gushing rhetoric that actually does a really poor job of explaining why it's amazing, and especially of explaining why it's amazing in a few short paragraphs of jargon-free plain English that anyone with technical background can understand. Again, Tim's post may be right, but it really falls short here and that's a big problem for the perception of blockchain. Until you can get people to understand why it's valuable, without the answer being to go and spend hours reading when there's perhaps no certainty of what you learn being valuable, it's always going to face this scepticism. It's not helped by the fact that the scammers and the non-scammers talk about it in the same kind of way, so you end up unable to distinguish the real information from the "blockchain doublespeak" - again, certainly without a lot of research. If you're busy you end up developing a heuristic where you file all of this in the mental waste basket.
  - TimJRobinson 4y ago
    You're right, it is hard to explain. That's why I believe long term it's going to be more like AWS - it will be financial plumbing that firms build upon and most end users won't even know they're using it. I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. Then again, a lot of people didn't understand the internet or it's jargon in the 90's, so we'll see how it plays out.
    - likeabbas 4y ago
      > I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. The people I've talked to in finance are really excited about Blockchain/DeFi because it's an opportunity for arbitrage in a completely unregulated market.
    - jrek 4y ago
      Steve Jobs in a university lecture in 1991 (iirc) articulated the vision among him and his industry contemporaries of consumers using thin clients accessing data from the cloud, a reality that took two decades to really come to fruition and that had to wait for infrastructure to catch up - the point being that while some people didn’t see the value of the internet, people in the know were able to simply and quickly articulate beneficial use cases.
      - oblio 4y ago
        Let's drop Steve Jobs as some sort of magic visionary. If you really want to talk about a true tech visionary, use: Douglas Engelbart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart Mother of All Demos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos > The 90-minute presentation demonstrated for the first time many of the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor. > December 9, <<<1968>>> 1968, not 1991.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing It is unquestionably amazing. But it's not the reality. Most data is not stored on the blockchain but instead in proprietary databases due to the prohibitive cost. And even if it was free the VCs are pushing hard for a defensible moat i.e. lock your users in with proprietary data and features. We've seen this play out with OpenSea and how its view of NFTs is different from what's on chain.
  - miracle2k 4y ago
    The data that matters is all on-chain: the smart contracts and the balances. This is why what Tim talks about has actually played out, and we have seen incredible composability between different protocols. > We've seen this play out with OpenSea and how its view of NFTs is different from what's on chain. If anything, the NFT ecosystem proofs this point. It consists of a dizzying array of aggregators, lending platforms, fractionalization platforms, alternative marketplaces, curation tools, API providers, all interacting with another. The fact that OpenSea retains a large marketshare among marketplaces is true (though now down to 60% - https://dune.com/sealaunch/NFT https://dune.com/sealaunch/NFT), but hasn't stopped this interoperability at all. Because in fact, what matters is on-chain, not what OpenSea exposes.
    - oblio 4y ago
      The fact that you use the NFT ecosystem as proof of anything is baffling. NFT doesn't even store its data. It's not even a true protocol that mandates things ensuring stability. You're buying thin air.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  Yeah. You can also argue that Git and IPFS aren't really blockchain, but at some point that's just splitting hairs... The big question is of course how best to deal with all the scammers in specifically the cryptocurrency space ?
threeseed 4y ago
> But the Internet was made for text communication No it wasn't. ARPANET [1] was made for transferring software and allowing remote access into the large mainframes on the network. Email came in 1971 and then 6 years later audio was being transferred. So it was always intended to support binary transmission and streaming video was being demoed by the BBC not soon after. The reason to be nitpicking is that the original protocols were flexible and efficient enough from day one to support a myriad of use cases. Where as platforms like Ethereum are already struggling with a lack of flexibility and a lack of efficient and cheap data transfer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
iterateofen 4y ago
the examples he gave of 20 companies building on defi on his platform are all varying examples of a liquidity pools that if you go to their websites need yet another layer of companies to use their platforms to build the exciting products on.
bnralt 4y ago
Are the comments different, though? "Permissionless composability" - basically blockchain jargon for financial transactions that have no oversight - are made possible by the things runeks mentions. It's like someone saying "this solves the double spending problem," and someone else going "no, this allows me to buy contraband." It's not exactly a surprise that crypto allows transactions without oversight. The issue is whether or not that's something actually useful, and for the vast majority of people it clearly isn't.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  It is a surprise, since all accounts and transactions are teansparent to all. And if you say that it was "obvious" that working mixers would exist, we are going to have to disagree. (Also I am willing to bet that if you put a significant amount of computing power into it, you can untangle that ball of yarn, and the US intelligence agencies did, like for Tor.)
sbf501 4y ago
TimJ lists simply enumerates a bunch of software names with almost no content to move the discussion along. I could have said, "Well blockchain is important because I used Schmaltz, Goober, and Cookie deployed on Flanders, Homer and Kearney, the open API just works out of the box," and by your logic I'd be some wizened mage on the subject. There is a cliff on HN, but you might want to invest in a parachute.

by dsco 4y ago

gatewaynode 4y ago

This. It's not like all innovation that has occurred in the crypto-currency space is useless, there are some real valuable innovations there. Blockchain as a whole is just too tainted to see the forest for the trees in all the greed, specifically the word "blockchain" has become magical and deceptive. "Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing." Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. And it's not a magic bullet statement either.

bartread 4y ago
> Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. I'm not saying Tim's wrong, but one of the problems that Ive seen a lot - to the point of being tempted to use the word "constantly" - with blockchain is this sort of gushing rhetoric that actually does a really poor job of explaining why it's amazing, and especially of explaining why it's amazing in a few short paragraphs of jargon-free plain English that anyone with technical background can understand. Again, Tim's post may be right, but it really falls short here and that's a big problem for the perception of blockchain. Until you can get people to understand why it's valuable, without the answer being to go and spend hours reading when there's perhaps no certainty of what you learn being valuable, it's always going to face this scepticism. It's not helped by the fact that the scammers and the non-scammers talk about it in the same kind of way, so you end up unable to distinguish the real information from the "blockchain doublespeak" - again, certainly without a lot of research. If you're busy you end up developing a heuristic where you file all of this in the mental waste basket.
- TimJRobinson 4y ago
  You're right, it is hard to explain. That's why I believe long term it's going to be more like AWS - it will be financial plumbing that firms build upon and most end users won't even know they're using it. I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. Then again, a lot of people didn't understand the internet or it's jargon in the 90's, so we'll see how it plays out.
  - likeabbas 4y ago
    > I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. The people I've talked to in finance are really excited about Blockchain/DeFi because it's an opportunity for arbitrage in a completely unregulated market.
  - jrek 4y ago
    Steve Jobs in a university lecture in 1991 (iirc) articulated the vision among him and his industry contemporaries of consumers using thin clients accessing data from the cloud, a reality that took two decades to really come to fruition and that had to wait for infrastructure to catch up - the point being that while some people didn’t see the value of the internet, people in the know were able to simply and quickly articulate beneficial use cases.
    - oblio 4y ago
      Let's drop Steve Jobs as some sort of magic visionary. If you really want to talk about a true tech visionary, use: Douglas Engelbart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart Mother of All Demos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos > The 90-minute presentation demonstrated for the first time many of the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor. > December 9, <<<1968>>> 1968, not 1991.
threeseed 4y ago
> Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing It is unquestionably amazing. But it's not the reality. Most data is not stored on the blockchain but instead in proprietary databases due to the prohibitive cost. And even if it was free the VCs are pushing hard for a defensible moat i.e. lock your users in with proprietary data and features. We've seen this play out with OpenSea and how its view of NFTs is different from what's on chain.
- miracle2k 4y ago
  The data that matters is all on-chain: the smart contracts and the balances. This is why what Tim talks about has actually played out, and we have seen incredible composability between different protocols. > We've seen this play out with OpenSea and how its view of NFTs is different from what's on chain. If anything, the NFT ecosystem proofs this point. It consists of a dizzying array of aggregators, lending platforms, fractionalization platforms, alternative marketplaces, curation tools, API providers, all interacting with another. The fact that OpenSea retains a large marketshare among marketplaces is true (though now down to 60% - https://dune.com/sealaunch/NFT https://dune.com/sealaunch/NFT), but hasn't stopped this interoperability at all. Because in fact, what matters is on-chain, not what OpenSea exposes.
  - oblio 4y ago
    The fact that you use the NFT ecosystem as proof of anything is baffling. NFT doesn't even store its data. It's not even a true protocol that mandates things ensuring stability. You're buying thin air.
BlueTemplar 4y ago
Yeah. You can also argue that Git and IPFS aren't really blockchain, but at some point that's just splitting hairs... The big question is of course how best to deal with all the scammers in specifically the cryptocurrency space ?

threeseed 4y ago

> But the Internet was made for text communication No it wasn't. ARPANET [1] was made for transferring software and allowing remote access into the large mainframes on the network. Email came in 1971 and then 6 years later audio was being transferred. So it was always intended to support binary transmission and streaming video was being demoed by the BBC not soon after. The reason to be nitpicking is that the original protocols were flexible and efficient enough from day one to support a myriad of use cases. Where as platforms like Ethereum are already struggling with a lack of flexibility and a lack of efficient and cheap data transfer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

iterateofen 4y ago

the examples he gave of 20 companies building on defi on his platform are all varying examples of a liquidity pools that if you go to their websites need yet another layer of companies to use their platforms to build the exciting products on.

bnralt 4y ago

Are the comments different, though? "Permissionless composability" - basically blockchain jargon for financial transactions that have no oversight - are made possible by the things runeks mentions. It's like someone saying "this solves the double spending problem," and someone else going "no, this allows me to buy contraband." It's not exactly a surprise that crypto allows transactions without oversight. The issue is whether or not that's something actually useful, and for the vast majority of people it clearly isn't.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
It is a surprise, since all accounts and transactions are teansparent to all. And if you say that it was "obvious" that working mixers would exist, we are going to have to disagree. (Also I am willing to bet that if you put a significant amount of computing power into it, you can untangle that ball of yarn, and the US intelligence agencies did, like for Tor.)

sbf501 4y ago

TimJ lists simply enumerates a bunch of software names with almost no content to move the discussion along. I could have said, "Well blockchain is important because I used Schmaltz, Goober, and Cookie deployed on Flanders, Homer and Kearney, the open API just works out of the box," and by your logic I'd be some wizened mage on the subject. There is a cliff on HN, but you might want to invest in a parachute.